The future of Adobe tools on Microsoft devices

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Here's the video that got a lot of cheers at Adobe MAX 2014. It showed a joint vision from Adobe and Microsoft for creative tools where everything is naturally editable with your own hands. This piece was a collaborative production between the Adobe Studio team and my RPG unit as well as many other players including Microsoft.

Now here's the backstory:

My team’s work used to almost instantaneously end up in front of millions of users like you when I worked on Adobe TV content. Early this year when the video training platform got tightly integrated into Creative Cloud to centralize all things training as well, I shifted my focus to form a brand new department called RPG (Rapid Prototype Group) an underground team somewhat in the dark even within Adobe so let alone to the general public. There are multiple R&D teams within Adobe so there’s nothing new about the thought of exploring innovative ideas here. Yet RPG takes a different approach to innovation where ideas get the spotlight.

I've collaborated with many Adobe technology partners like Sony, Vaio, Samsung, Intel, HP, nVidia etc and you probably saw the results of such content partnerships over the years. This year, at Adobe MAX we showed a video illustrating a close collaboration with Microsoft about the future of Adobe creative tools running on Microsoft products and platforms. It’s a random sampling of various concepts giving a rare glimpse into the inner workings of this new area of shaping the future of Creativity that I’ve ventured into.

When Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen introduced the video the reaction from the crowd was clearly positive. The social media reactions from people watching the live stream and replays were also equally good. It’s a very rewarding end to the video project that spanned a short time with many consecutive long hour days (as in working until 4am sort of days) because the request to present something at MAX came relatively late in the game. Despite the unprecedented complexity of multiple teams involved from the Adobe Studio team and contractors, Product teams, Engineering teams and let’s not forget, our friends from Microsoft (who were remarkably flexible and soft on us) the race to communicate this vision to our fans was an intense joint effort that I’d remember for quite some time.

Few stills from some of my favorite scenes from the video

This is the completed result after the vector drawing demo which got cut off from the final edit to keep the duration short.

This sketch of a Cobalt Co50 on the other hand lasted from the early eidts to the very last version

An earlier test of the 3D camera adjust demo also featured the same plane

Early tests of the paint demo weren't as dramatic as the final.

As you can see from this early version, the fashion model lost a LOT of weight by the time we filmed the final version!

Here are some behind the scenes pictures (photo credit: Jane Selle Morgan)

Sometimes you really have to act like the technology you are discussing to get the point across

Shooting "fashion skelleton" (I thought that would make a great Punk Rock band name)

There were many other scenes where my hand was the only thing visible but in this scene I had to make a quick cameo.

Lucky leaf got better lighting than I ever had in any of the times I was talking on camera all these years.

Shooting the famous paint scene

We better wash these Surface Pro 3s after we are done

Shooting the "AV guy" scene - How many hot lights and sweaty crew and cast can we cozy up into a tiny edit room?

When not playing hand model, I play stunt hand model

Shooting the sketch and smudge scene

Effects of working long hours were evident in our "quote board". See the contrast of what Ayc says at 9am vs 9pm. Fortunately her favorite band Petshop Boys had made enough songs to last several days before we had to repeat the same tracks. Unfortunatly the rest of the crew had to listen to Petshop Boys every day.

Some scenes took us to interesting places worthy of an album cover photo

Just part of the dream team

Many thanks to our SVP David Wadhwani, Chief Strategist Mark Randall, Creative Director Dan Cowles,
SM Executive Communications Kari Norder, our friends at Microsoft and Sky Car and everybody else involved for making it possible to put this video together in record time. I'm proud to play my little part of connecting the dots and filling the gaps.